“Navman Wireless provides us with extremely valuable data. We're coming closer to world best practice for freight costs, supporting our drivers and keeping our customer service promises.”
Benefits of Navman Wireless
- A 28% reduction in overall delivery freight, costs equalling approximately $880,000 pa savings
- Increased delivery efficiency
- Automated run sheets and fewer driver discrepancies
- Improved customer service
Reid Stockfeeds has been in business for 25 years, supplying mixed feed to Victoria's dairy, poultry and pig farms.
Through a supply chain benchmarking exercise, they discovered that they met world best practice in many areas but their freight costs were too high. They investigated vehicle tracking options to help improve efficiencies. Reid Stockfeeds looked at alternatives but chose Navman Wireless based on recommendations of others and their Telstra account manager.
Today, Reid Stockfeeds has Navman Wireless Tracking installed in 13 vehicles and will increase that number as they become more involved in the running of the new mill. Andrew Snowdon, CFO of Reid Stockfeeds, is extremely pleased with the improved efficiencies they've seen as a result of tracking their vehicles.
More Organised Deliveries Means Reduced Costs
Reid Stockfeeds makes many small deliveries to approximately 800 customers. The company has a 35 tonne B-double truck as well as 25 tonne semis. Most trucks have separate 5 tonne compartments. Some farms take the feed of one or two compartments, others the feed from the entire truck.
Mr Snowdon says, "Our Production Manager wants to ensure that compartments are filled in the proper order so drivers don't need to backtrack to get the correct feed to the correct farm. He also wants to reduce downtime at the mill and keep trucks from travelling more than they need to. Navman Wireless has helped us meet these goals because we have each farm plotted on the OnlineAVL. By seeing where the farms are, we can fill each truck in order of delivery and send our drivers on the best route.
"These delivery improvements have helped us reduce delivery freight costs from 7% to 5% of our total income. With our turnover of $44 million, that 2% equals a saving of $880,000 pa", states Mr Snowdon.
Driver Acceptance
Mr Snowdon says, "At first our drivers were suspicious of the tracking devices but now they're fine and appreciate that they don't have to do run sheets anymore since we use the OnlineAVL to track where they are. No more trampled bits of paper, no more bad handwriting to read, everyone is happy."
The company also uses Navman Wireless to record distance travelled, time taken, speed, number of deliveries and discharge time in order to conduct driver performance reviews. "It's very accurate data that we couldn't obtain without Navman Wireless," says Mr Snowdon.
Improved Customer Service
"It's always been the company's promise to get feed to a customer's farm any way we can - we've built our reputation on this high level of delivery. Now Navman enables us to be extremely precise. We've had customers call to check an ETA and instead of calling the driver, we look on the Online AVL and tell the customer exactly where the truck is," comments Mr Snowdon.
He continues, "Navman also lets us print reports so if a customer questions whether we made a delivery, we can show them exactly when our truck arrived and left their farm."
